


Haunted by you

by Teatrolley (orphan_account)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, First Kiss, Getting Together, M/M, death personified, mentions of suicidal ideation, what is this this is entirely metaphorical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 02:29:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6176668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Teatrolley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From Markus Zusak: "A last note from your narrator: I am haunted by humans."</p><p>__</p><p>A gun doesn't have the power to kill. It enables the ones who want to.<br/>Or: When John wakes, Death is in his kitchen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Haunted by you

**Author's Note:**

> This idea came to me late one night, and the evening after this was made. Aka. this is the product of a twenty-four hour haze.
> 
> \--  
> This is basically a retelling of the emotional development of ASIP, if you want it to be. But with more kissing and more magical realism

When John wakes, it’s because it sounds like someone is attempting to upend the entirety of his kitchen. Or like a hurricane has gone into it. Neither of those seem like likely possibilities, but with eyes still closed, he hears the sounds of cupboard doors opening and pans clanking together again. 

Exhaling, he is pinching the bridge of his nose, when he realizes that the gun – the only absolutely surefire way of protecting himself – is also in the kitchen, along with whatever is making the noise.

The noise, though. John knows things about breaking in to places, and he knows things about killing people. This is not the displayed behavior of anyone who desires to actually do any of those things.

He gets up. There’s nothing else to do really, is there? He opens his eyes, and stays in his bed for the time it takes his eyes to adjust to the darkness, before he gets out of it; he is silent, unlike his possible visitor. There are mistakes you don’t commit after what feels like ages in the battlefield. 

He lists along the not-very-long-at-all hallway down to the kitchen. The sounds don’t stop, so he has plenty of sound-level coverage to prevent him from being heard. 

As he makes it to the doorway, he gets a first glimpse of the person in there. Because they are a person; and not a hurricane or other such natural disaster. They’re a man, in fact; tall, lean, and entirely dressed in black. Their paleness could rival that of the moon’s. It’s an image, John thinks, almost fitting of a children’s book. 

And then not: the man turns around quickly, as he must notice John’s presence, and John’s perception instantly changes; with cheekbones and lips like that, this is a man who belongs in some sort of black-and-white aesthetic pornography. 

“Who the fuck are you?” he asks, which is not what he was thinking, but probably the better question once he stops to think about it. At least to a man, who has, by all intents and purposes, broken into his flat. 

The man raises his eyebrows, looking as sleek and put-together as the rest of him, but remains silent. Only when he shifts, so his weight lands entirely on his right foot, and John’s eyes are drawn downwards, does John realize that the man is holding his gun between his fingers. 

For a moment John is nothing but exasperated, and with himself, none-the-less. He always thought something like his sexual drive would be the death of him. But then he takes the man in again; discovers his nonchalant stance, and the expression entirely void of any antagonistic bearing. 

“Okay,” he says, glancing between the man’s eyes and the gun in his hands. The man raises his brows, as if in a challenge. John almost finds himself smirking. He purses his lips instead, to try and hide it.

“You’re not going to tell me who you are?” he asks. The man shrugs. 

“Then what are you doing here? You can’t not reply to that. Being in my kitchen in the middle of the night, and all,” John continues. 

Maybe it’s only because he’s watching the man as intensely as he is, but he doesn’t miss the slight tug of the corners of his lips, nor the momentary glint of his expression. 

“Oh, you know,” the man says. “Just browsing.” 

That voice. Low, but smooth. John shifts his weight onto his good leg, and watches as the man casually opens a cupboard door, barely glancing inside, before he closes it again.

“Browsing?”

“I’m here early.” 

“Early?” John has no idea what the man is talking about. He’s not been planning for anyone to come around. And, more than that, he doesn’t know this guy. He’s aware that, as he asks the question, his voice becomes strained. 

“You have a limp,” the man says; changing the subject. John easily recognizes the tactic; he’s used it more times than is countable.

“Psychosomatic,” the man continues. And, all right; he could definitely have seen John’s limping in a reflective surface as he walked in here, but there’s no way he could know this without having prior knowledge of John. It should make his blood run cold; it doesn’t. It makes him want to grin instead. 

“And how could you possibly know that?” he asks. “Are you stalking me?”

The man huffs out a breath, as if the question is stupid. As he speaks, however, he sends a smile in John’s direction.

“I’m observing you.”

“Put the gun down,” John says. The man will be caught off-guard, which is a good time to make an order like this. Maybe he’ll comply before he realizes the extend of what was asked. 

He doesn’t. That is, he definitely realizes. He keeps watching John, but shrugs, and nonchalantly hands the gun over. John takes it, and is quick to put the safety on and put it in his own back pocket; somewhere it can’t be stolen back from.

“What do you mean ‘observing’?” he continues. 

“Aren’t you going to offer me a drink?” the man asks. Diversion tactic, again. Somehow, John doesn’t mind. “Isn’t that what people do?”

“People?” John can’t help his snort. “Are you not a part of that category?”

“Only in the physical sense, I’d say,” the man says. What a strange being, really. John, despite what is probably wise, is intrigued. 

“Right,” he says. He only notices that he’s pinching the bridge of his nose again, when he catches the man’s eyes following the movement. “What’s your name?”

For a moment, the man looks away, and John thinks he’ll refrain from answering again. He watches as the other person’s fingers travel over his kitchen counter, before they reach his fruit bowl, and grabs one of the fruits in there; an apple. 

The man’s lips looks nothing short of brilliant as they wrap around it. John listens to the sound as the skin of it breaks, and watches the man chewing, before he swallows. 

“Death,” the man says then. “That’s my name.”

Somewhere in the back of his mind, John counts his own blinking; he does it four times. 

“Right,” he says then, again. What else is there to do? “A drink, then.”

The man – well; death – smiles.

**hour 1**

They get a drink and, for some reason, John is not compelled to throw the person who calls themselves by the name of Death out of his flat, despite the absurdity of the situation, and despite the increasingly late hour. 

He’s strange, Death, if that is really what he is. He seems otherworldly, either way; his movements are exuberant in a way that is quickly beaten out of most people in the real world. His fascination with John’s possessions rival even John’s own.

“You were a soldier,” Death says, after a while of looking through John’s bookcase. John can’t figure out how he knows; he doesn’t have much evidence around.

“I was a doctor,” John corrects him. He’s sitting on the edge of his couch, watching as Death rifles through his stuff.

Death turns around, remaining standing, and the corners of his mouth lift just slightly. Turning back around, his fingers travel across the backs of John’s books. He doesn’t take any of them out.

“You prevented me from doing my job, then,” he says. 

“Yeah.” John keeps watching his back. He doesn’t know why he hopes he might get a better response this time, but he still says, “About that: Death? What do you mean by that?”

“What I said.” It’s out quickly, like a whiplash; there’s no hesitation. 

“Yeah, but that’s not possible,” John says. “Death isn’t a being. It’s not even a thing.” He’s experienced enough of it to be certain of this. “It’s the absence of one.” Pain, he thinks. It’s the escape from reality.

“Once you’ve eliminated the impossible,” Death mumbles.

“What’s that?”

"Once you've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

John can’t help it; he lets out a single chuckle. He has never met anyone stranger than this man, and yet he is intrigued. He has never heard a more ludicrous theory, and yet… 

"I think what you're telling me is the impossible part. You being an imposter who broke in is the improbable," he says, but he doesn’t entirely mean it. He’s not quick to trust, and yet, and yet, and yet, he might trust this man.

“Suit yourself,” Death says, but he must realize some of John’s internal thoughts, because when he turns back around he’s wearing a grin and some mischievous eyes. 

“This,” he says, and throws something to John. John only just manages to grab it, before it falls. It’s a book, he realizes; fiction. One of his own. Death must have just taken it. 

“It’s a book,” John says. 

“Yeah, I get that.” John watches as Death comes over to sit not far from him, on his desk chair. “Why this one?”

“Why this specific book?”

“Why fiction?” Death corrects himself. “When so much happens already? Why not read about that?”

Not something John has ever thought much about, but okay. He turns the book over in his hands; it feels familiar under his touch, and yet, at the moment, far-away.

“Fiction often deals with truth,” he says. Death hums, and folds his legs up under himself on the chair. John wonders what age he is; like this, he looks young. Younger than his body, at least. 

“All right,” Death says. “But that’s not it. Real life is true, too.” 

John can’t help his smile, not this time either; it seems this is a regular occurrence with Death. Who could have known he’d ever think a sentence like that? Who could have known this is what would make him feel truly alive, for the first time in ages?

“It’s escapism,” John continues. “I guess that’s why. It’s not real life, which means that the reader is outside of real life, too, for a moment.”

Death purses his lips. John mirrors it.

“Why would you want that?” Death asks. This time, when John smiles, he recognizes it’s sadness. For someone who deals with something like dying, Death knows very little about life.

“Why wouldn’t you?” John says. He hands the book back to Death, who, after a hesitant moment, takes it. 

“How about you?” John asks. “And ‘real life’? How much of it do you see?” 

“Not much.”

Death had been watching him, his expression soft; open. Now it becomes closed off, and the lines on it hardens. Suddenly John can tell how much Death has seen just by looking at him. 

“Don’t you ever stay around?” John asks. “Aren’t you ever curios?”

Death doesn’t answer. Instead, he stands up, and puts the book back in its place from where he took it. John watches his back, all of a sudden tensed up. It seems he hit a nerve. For a moment, after the book is put away, Death leans against the bookcase and keeps his back turned on John.

“Aren’t _you_ ever curious?” Death asks. “About what death is like?” He’s changing the subject again, but by now John expected him to.

This time it’s John’s turn to purse his lips, and shut his mouth. He’s more than curious, is the thing. He’s desiring. He closes his eyes, and wills the black hole inside of him to stop sucking him up with its gravity. 

When he opens his eyes, Death is watching him, and there’s a softness there that is more than just a softness; it is, also, an understanding. 

“Can’t you tell me?” John asks. 

“No. Breach of confidentiality,” Death says. Which is, really, almost amusing.

“Is it a _business_?” John asks. 

Somehow the idea of it is what it takes to close the danger zone inside of him off, and suddenly he can breathe a little freer again. Suddenly he can allow the warmth accompanying the odd soft spot he is beginning to develop. 

Death sends him a smile back that looks almost similar to the one John is certain is on his own features. It reminds John of a miniature house; something you could crawl inside and live in. Something of a simpler, safer time.

“It’s freedom,” John says, when he realizes that Death won’t speak. “Dying is.”

Death’s eyes lower themselves. He looks almost sad, as he shakes his head.

“This isn’t,” he says, gesturing down himself. “Don’t glorify it. It’s not really that great.”

His expression, when his eyes meet John, makes John’s throat tighten around itself.

__

In the bathroom lighting, John’s skin looks as ashen as ever. It always does, but tonight it seems even more evident. There are deep circles beneath his eyes; the tiredness that it is the evidence of can suddenly be felt all the way inside his bones.

John’s knuckles have whitened with the effort he puts into grabbing the sink beneath him. He lowers his head, to escape his own reflection watching him, and tries to breathe in. 

The thing is this: He knows why Death is here. Not that he’s been told, not that he expected him to be like this; a person, an entity. But he was expecting death to come; to stretch out his hand and take John with him, to a place with less revolting heat, less claustrophobia, less aching chests and pain. 

The other thing is this: Now he can’t. If Death, strangely kind as he seems to be, doesn’t want to take him, then how could John want to go?

It feels like losing; more so than anything has. And then it does not.

John looks up, and watches his own reflection again; stares it down, looks into its eyes; he faces it. The LED lighting of his bathroom has finally caught on, and now his face is illuminated by warm, orange light. It makes his cheeks look colorful again, and his eyes stand out with something other than his black pupils. He inhales; his chest expands, and the gravity stops pulling at him. He smiles.

**hour 2**

When John comes back into his living room, Death is asleep on his couch. It seems he’s found one of John’s old sweaters, patterned red and yellow, and he’s stretched the palms down over his own hands as he lies with his forehead pressed against his own wrists, and his eyes closed. 

Moonlight is shining in through the window, and he, too, looks warmer than before. John watches him; does nothing more than look. It’s amazing, he thinks, how quickly things can grow and blossom if you allow them to.

Only a few steps are between him and the bed; he walks them, before his sits down on the edge of it, and places a thumb between Death’s eyebrows. He watches in fascination as the eyebrows narrow in confusion, before the eyelids flutter and open. Death’s eyes are wide and filled with all of the colors, as they look into John’s. As they do, his skin stops being tense. 

“I didn’t think Death slept,” John says; voice soft to match the moment. 

“Death doesn’t,” Death says. His finger comes up to touch John’s, where it is still pressed to the skin on Death’s forehead. 

“You didn’t sound like you liked fiction,” John says. There’s something he needs to know. Death frowns again, as if puzzled. 

“Important because?” he asks.

“Just is.” Death purses his lips for a moment, but then sits up. John lets his hand fall away from his face, but puts it to his knee instead; the skin there is warm through Death’s trousers. “So?”

“I like non-fiction more,” Death says. 

“Because? You asked me, so you have to reply.”

Death smiles, if only for a moment. John smiles, too. For a beat that is all they do; let their lips speak their words for them.

“Because they’re stories of things that have happened. Are happening.”

“Yes.” John expected this.

“Because I take lives,” Death says. “And this is the evidence of their existence before me. After me.”

“Because you are curious,” John adds. “Because you’re fascinated. Yeah? By the realness of it?”

Death looks away, and John knows that he is right. He wants to take Death’s hand, so he does, and holds it between his own, until Death looks at him and exhales in the most vulnerable way possible. 

If Death wants personhood as much as he seems to, John thinks, then how could John want to escape it? He presses a kiss to the back of Death’s hand and feels his lips hit soft, warm, alive skin. 

Death grins, intertwines their fingers, and squeezes John’s hand back.

**hour 3**

John, he decides, does not want to sleep. It is not often he is painfully honest with himself, but if he is now, he’ll have to tell himself the true reason for this; he is scared that, upon awakening, Death will have left his body, alive but lonely once more, behind.

Instead, they sit cross-legged on the floor, across from each other, like young people would. Between them is a game of Operation; John can’t remember why he got it, or why it has been kept, but there it was in a hidden-away box, and it’s something to do to keep each other awake.

“So, Death,” John says, with the pincer in his hand, and the animation of the Operation male before him, “What’s the most fragile part of the human body?” He nods towards the game, to show Death how to explain.

“Don’t you know? Being a doctor and all?” Death asks.

“In theory, yes. But which body-part has been the most fatal to humans throughout our history?”

Surprise is not a feeling he experiences, when Death leans in a little closer, and pulls out the plastic heart, too brightly red, and wrongly shaped, with his pincer, before he puts it in his palm and shows it to John.

“This has killed the most people,” he says. “Metaphorically, at least. Quite an error, really.”

It means: love is what kills us. Sure, John thinks, but can’t love also be our saving grace?

“Don’t you have one?” John asks. “A heart, that is?”

Death remains silent, so John nudges the game away with his foot, and gets onto his knees, crawling towards the space formerly separating them from each other. As he makes it across, he places his hand above the place on Death’s chest, where his heart might be. Underneath his fingertips, he feels a heart beating fast, racing ahead of the both of them.

“This is just my current physical form,” Death says. “This heart isn’t mine.” 

And yet, John thinks, and yet, and yet, and yet, it beats harder with the nerves I see on your face. And yet you look as alive right now, as any actual person could.

“Why are you here?” John asks. He’s been thinking it for a while, but only now does he voice the question out loud to the only person who could really reply.

“I’m here for you,” Death says.

“I know.” John has known for a while now. “Why are you here early? Why are you changing my mind?”

It should be impossible, but Death’s heart beats faster beneath his hand. This person, John thinks, is more human than anyone else I’ve met for the longest of times.

“Because I don’t like my job,” Death says. “And you’re a good doctor.”

His face is turned away, his head dipped downwards, and it tells John exactly what he needs to know; that this is far from everything Death has to say.

“And?” he prompts. 

Death swallows. As he does, he turns his head to the side, and faces even further away. To John, the gesture means intimacy more than anything could. If there’s fear in the face of it, it’s because it’s real.

“Tell me, Death,” he says, “what’s the most beautiful part of the human body?”

Death’s fisted hand comes up between them. John knows what is inside, already before it opens. He unfolds Death’s fingers for him, and watches as the small plastic heart is revealed.

“Give it to me,” he says, holding out his hand for it.

“Why?”

“Because I’ll keep it safe. I’m a doctor.”

Finally, finally, their eyes meet. There are depths enough for John to get lost in, if he wanted to. Instead he holds onto Death’s gaze, until Death closes his hand once more, turns it around, and opens it over John’s palm, causing the heart to fall into it.

John takes it, puts it in his breast pocket, and grabs onto Death’s jaw. Then he presses their lips together in a kiss. As Death exhales a breath into his mouth, John feels as if he has been given the exact opposite of what the name entails; he’s been given something like life.

**hour 4**

Back in the kitchen, this time John turns on the lights. It’s warmer now, too, getting closer to the breakings of daylight upon them. The gun, which John put back in a drawer before they left the room, is also drawn back into the open room around them.

“So, Death,” John says, with the gun in his hand, “tell me about life. It’s messy?”

“It’s harder to take once you know what having one is like.”

Death still wears his jumper, but now Death’s lips are pink from being kissed, and his cheeks have reddened with it, too. There’s blood pumping inside of him.

“So?” 

“We don’t,” Death says. “Know, that is. We’re not supposed to.”

“But?”

“I want to.”

Me too, John thinks, me too. I have a foundation now; let’s build on top of it. Let’s make something sharable, let’s keep our blood pumping, let me crawl inside of you and give you the things that I have, just as you give me the things that were once upon a time just yours.

“Do you have to kill me?” John asks.

Death inclines his head. “I was never going to,” he says. “You were.” 

“Hm,” John says; he knew this. “Well.” 

He knows guns intimately; how to put them together but also how to dismantle them. He can keep their eyes locked onto one another as he does the latter, until it is nothing but harmless parts and a wish no longer there between the follicles of his skin. Death’s lips are tugging at their corners, and when John sends him a smile, Death allows his own to surface.

Death’s heart still beats beneath his palm when John places his hand back on top of it. His own does the same, when Death copies his movement. 

“I’ve been haunted by you,” John says. I’ve been, I’ve been, I’ve been. I am no more. I am free.

“I’ve been haunted by you,” Death says. “The life of you.”

John taps his chest with a finger, then his lips with another, until they shape-shift into a grin beneath his hand again.

“Do you see how much of a human you are?” John asks. 

“Don’t humans have names?”

“Sherlock.”

Wrinkles appear by the corner of Death’s eyes, and the warmth of them could burn John from the inside in a good way.

“Why?” Death asks.

“Because you look like one.”

“Sherlock?”

“Yes. My Dear Sherlock.”

Death smiles. John kisses him to taste its glee, and is surprised when it almost seems to work. He lingers for a long time. All of it; they have it all between them now. So many hours are stretched out before them, so much time before another Death will come to take them both. John knows, deep inside his bones, that it will never be enough; not even infinity could be.

“You should really quite your job, though,” John says. Sherlock, the man, the human; Sherlock, for the first time yet, laughs. 

“And do what, then?” he asks.

“Live.”

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously this is a complete oversimplification of how mental illness is dealt with, which is not really through the singular power of love at all, and should therefore not be read as a story about that. This is more me exploring a concept, really.
> 
> If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts, please don't go with it alone. [This](http://www.suicide.org/international-suicide-hotlines.html) is a list about international suicide hotlines, should you need it 
> 
> I can be found at [shezzaisgay](http://shezzaisgay.tumblr.com) on tumblr


End file.
